Subject Area: Earth & Environment

How the traits that distinguish species develop and diversify over time is a long-standing question in the field of evolutionary biology. This Open Highlight investigates how species have evolved…

GIGA is an international non-profit community of scientists dedicated to promoting genomics research of diverse non-model invertebrate species. Invertebrates comprise over 95% of all animal species…

Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals to roam the Earth, exceeding all other land-dwelling vertebrates in both mean and maximal body size. While convergently evolving many features…

Saba Bank is the largest submarine atoll in the Atlantic Ocean, adjacent to the nearby island of Saba, in the Netherlands Antilles. The submerged platform is ~2200 sq km, with a 50 km fringing reef…

This collection has been created by the editors of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), an open-access online database which holds information on all marine species, and some of their…

"DNA barcoding" was proposed formally in 2003 as a technique for species diagnosis and identification using short standardized gene regions. Early conferences focused on the degree to which…

Oil Spills cause catastrophic and persistent damage on enormous scales, and have dramatic consequences for both humans and the environment. Research into the consequences of oil spills is multifaceted…

Ocean Science or Oceanography covers a wide range of scientific topics, including complex ecosystems, sustainability, marine organisms, ocean currents, climate change and the geology of the sea…

Few areas can benefit as much from the force of Open Access as climate change research: the combination of public, scientific, and governmental interest with the mounting misinformation…

This collection represents those articles published in PLOS journals on the general topic of Paleontology (the study of fossils and of life forms that existed in past geological periods). The…